Chen Deming
Minister of Commerce, China
Date of Birth: 1949
Place of Birth: Shangai
Born in 1949 in Shanghai, Chen studied business at Nanjing
University, took a doctorate in management and joined the Communist
Party in 1974. A job as assistant manager of a Taizhou meat-packing
factory led to provincial leadership posts in Jiangsu, a coastal
province and now one of China's wealthiest. Mayor of Suzhou in
1998-2000, he was Suzhou Party Secretary (a more powerful post) until
2002. Suzhou is the site of the export processing zones that attracted
investment from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore in the 1990s and now churn out China's high-tech exports.
In
2002, the Party moved him to the less-developed Shaanxi Province, but
in 2006 Chen moved up to the State Development and Reform Commission as
Vice-Chairman. In December 2007, he took up his current post as
Commerce Minister.